ANKENY, Iowa — You can listen to long stretches of Pete Buttigieg’s remarks and hear little or no reference to the trailblazing nature of his campaign. You can almost forget.
But as he wrapped up a rally here on Thursday night, with the clock ticking down fast to the Iowa caucuses, he made soaring, stirring mention of it. You remembered.
“Iowa has a remarkable knack for making history,” he told hundreds of supporters, noting that he’d initially visited the state to support Barack Obama during the Democratic primary in 2008, when Obama’s Iowa victory set him on his way. “You changed America’s — and the world’s — expectations for what was possible.”
Then he alluded to Iowa’s legalization of gay marriage in 2009, six years before that happened nationally, and how it gave him hope that he might someday “be a happily married man.” The crowd roared. I had one foot out the door — it had been a long, long day — and I stopped in my tracks. As a gay man and an American, I felt a surge of pride.
It’s do-or-die time for Buttigieg, whose polls numbers recently have been moving in the wrong direction. He probably needs to finish first or a very strong second on Monday to preserve any shot to be his party’s 2020 nominee.
He needs neither to claim an enormous accomplishment. Win or lose, Buttigieg is the first openly gay American to become a serious presidential candidate, one who landed on the covers of prominent magazines, was fawned over on the most-watched television talk shows, raised exponentially more money than any of the governors in the race, outpaced Beto O’Rourke, outpolled Kamala Harris, caught President Trump’s attention, qualified for all of the Democratic debates and more than held his own in each of them.
Win or lose, he’s an example, an education and a hell of a story. That narrative is about youth — he just turned 38 — and the power of hyper-articulateness in an era of presidential crudeness. But it’s also about sexual orientation, which has and hasn’t factored into his pitch in surprising ways.
He has grappled, on the national political stage, with questions that all L.G.B.T.Q. people ask, so that his candidacy is a metaphor for our lives: To what extent am I defined by my sexual orientation or gender identity? What does and doesn’t it tell you about me?
Buttigieg’s answers have disappointed some L.G.B.T.Q. people — and were bound to, given the expectations placed on any politician who is blessed and cursed to become a symbol. Female candidates have had experiences similar to his; candidates of color, too. These pioneers are exhorted to open doors closed to the groups they represent but to represent those groups first and foremost, and that’s tough. Check with Obama. Or Hillary Clinton.
Or, now, Buttigieg. He has weathered complaints, even derision, from L.G.B.T.Q. progressives, many of whom say he’s not gay enough, his manner and mannerisms too strait-laced, his policy preoccupations too moderate, his success infuriatingly reflective of how readily and well he assimilates into heterosexual America. “Gays Seem to Be Mayor Pete’s Worst Critics” was the headline of a column in The Washington Blade, an L.G.B.T.Q. publication.
That saddens me. As I’ve written before, part of what so many gay people have fought so hard for is the recognition that we don’t fit into tidy boxes, otherwise known as stereotypes — not sartorially, not ideologically. Absolutely disagree with Buttigieg’s opposition to “Medicare for all” if you have a different view, but don’t suggest that he should support it because he’s gay. Yawn at all those perfectly pressed white dress shirts that he wears, but don’t cast them as a betrayal.
And don’t say that by discussing his own Christianity, he’s consorting with the enemy. Yes, religion has been used cruelly against L.G.B.T.Q. people. But one of the most profound dimensions of Buttigieg’s candidacy is how he has turned that around, for instance asserting that his marriage to his husband, Chasten, has brought him “closer to God.”
“That’s the thing that I wish the Mike Pences of the world would understand,” he said in a speech last year, referring to the vice president’s anti-gay record. “That if you have a problem with who I am, your problem is not with me. Your quarrel, sir, is with my creator.”
Buttigieg has campaigned frequently with his husband, embracing him onstage, and has mentioned his marriage in debates. And he doesn’t shy away from questions about his sexual orientation, which he didn’t publicly acknowledge until the age of 33, shortly before his election to a second term as mayor of South Bend, Ind.
But he doesn’t volunteer lengthy ruminations about its impact on how he sees the world or showcase it in any other way. It’s there if you look and listen for it. But sometimes you have to look and listen hard.
None of the voters at his rallies in Iowa brought it up when I asked them what drew them to Buttigieg. They mostly raved about his intelligence.
Were there any particular obstacles he might face in a general election?
“His youth,” said Louann Cooling, 62, of Le Grand, Iowa. It was the same answer — his youth, or his inexperience — that others gave. No one mentioned his being openly gay.
Being gay and an emblem of progress hasn’t given Buttigieg any special traction with younger Democrats, who respond much less favorably to him than older Democrats do. It hasn’t established any solidarity with other minorities, though he reached for such a connection when stating a commitment to racial justice during the Democrats’ November debate.
“While I do not have the experience of ever having been discriminated against because of the color of my skin, I do have the experience of sometimes feeling like a stranger in my own country, turning on the news and seeing my own rights come up for debate,” he said. “Wearing this wedding ring in a way that couldn’t have happened two elections ago lets me know just how deep my obligation is to help those whose rights are on the line every day, even if they are nothing like me in their experience.”
Those remarks didn’t have the effect he intended. Some African-Americans accused him of equating very different kinds of discrimination, and polls show that his support from black Democrats remains abysmal. When they appraise Buttigieg, they notice a whole lot beyond his sexual orientation, including worrisome friction between him and some black residents of South Bend and a path of extraordinary privilege (Harvard, a Rhodes scholarship, a job with McKinsey) that brought him to this point.
What does Buttigieg’s being gay tell you? That he has trepidation and caution in him — he stayed in the closet all those years — but that he has courage, too, enough to pursue the presidency despite the inevitable spotlight on him as a novelty.
What doesn’t his being gay tell you? His musical tastes, for one. The last time I had a long talk with him was in mid-December, and he had just met the performer Lizzo, who was a fellow guest on “CBS This Morning.” She’s an icon for outsiders, brimming with delicious attitude, and I assumed he’d be thrilled.
But I’m not sure he really does “thrilled,” and he confessed to being more a Dave Matthews Band fan. In any case, he said, “I usually have a kind of celebrity blindness.”
A gay man who doesn’t twinkle at the stars around him? Yep, our creator makes us in all shapes and stripes. Thank you, Mayor Pete, for taking that message out on the trail.
I invite you to sign up for my free weekly email newsletter. You can follow me on Twitter (@FrankBruni).
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.
Source: Elections - nytimes.com
